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Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 20/12/2021 [Updated: 22/12/2021] Its the first day of holidays and I'm bored already.... So I cooked up a neat wifi/wemos d1 mini/arduino/LED display for displaying a station's current CPM. It works by simply connecting to one's Wi-Fi and then goes to the URL, pulls the data, strips the first space and everything afterwards then converts what is left to a float (the CPM count from the start of the string) and displays it. The bar graph LEDs are mapped from 0 to 100 CPM at full scale deflection, but the 7 segment display will display up to 999.9

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 19/12/2021 Whilst looking around the internet I found a trove of old declassified CIA documents. Among these were one called 'Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident CIA, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Congressional, GAO, and Foreign Press Monitoring Files' that goes into some detail about the accident from the perspective of the authorities. There was originally 4010 pages and sadly this has been shaved down to a mere 224 pages in the released document. An excerpt of this document: THE ACCIDENT According to reports filed with

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 05/12/2021 Something I really dislike is planned obsolescence, and closely 2nd to that, where things are not user serviceable and have to be returned to the manufacturer for minor things such as battery replacement. I'm a large advocate of 'right to repair'. The battery in the Gamma Scout is a 10 year, 3.6v Lithium battery soldered directly onto the board. Gamma Scout (at last check some time ago) wanted 40 Euro plus shipping one way to Germany to replace the battery. Pfft! The original battery is about £20 all in for a replacement, but I decided

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 04/12/2021 Well, I managed to destroy my second SBT-10A. The first destroyed itself as far as I am concerned as I took it out of it's box one day, and it was toast - post here . This one was my fault. I dropped a polarizing filter on the mica window (only from about 4cm) but it hit it and went with a proper loud bang, right in my face and showered my microscope and desk with bits of mica, then the black bits on the inside of the mica just turned to a yellow schmoo in the air atmosphere. It would have been a nice experiment had I actually planned

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 06/12/2021 I have bought a 'PBI Microbial Air Sampler SAS Super 90' just for the simple fact it looked proper funky! I have no idea if it works, or how it works, or even exactly what it does, but bought it for shits and giggles. I paid £15. Working, they are going for about £1000! I care not for testing microbes in the air, so I figure I can make something with it. So far I have thought I can turn it into a ridiculously powerful flash light. Something around 100w LED. I could use a liquid cooler in the body, LED and smallish heatsink at the end,

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 04/10/2019 There is currently Uranium Element sample - Uranyl Zinc Acetate (ZnUO2) for sale on Ebay (UK) (At the time of writing 04 October 2019). I have just received mine and it gets a respectable ~2000cpm sat right next to a SBM-20. This is the same seller I have gotten Uranium dioxide (UO2yellow cake) and Uranium trioxide (UO3) from. He seems reliable and have exchanged the odd email with him. If you decide to buy you will get a small amount, about 0.5g in a small vile (as terribly pictured below...). Also please note that I have absolutely no

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 27/08/2019 This is a list of the common radioactive sources available on ebay (at the time of writing - 31/08/2019) They vary a lot in radioactivity and I own all of these so I will try and give you my opinion of how active they are using an SBM-20 tube, in a rough, roundabout way. They will be marked 1 to 5 (5 being most active) based on the samples I own and based against each other. Where I have included the emission type (a, b & y (alpha, beta & gamma)) this is the overall emission. A lot of the different radiation types are caused from

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 25/08/2019 I thought I would try and collate a good list of old and new disaster and post apocalyptic films. Below are the films I have/have watched (Some I haven't watched as yet). Nuclear disaster: The Day After (1983) Threads (1984) Chernobyl HBO miniseries (2019) The War Game (1965) Dr Strangelove (1964) Broken Arrow (1996) Chernobyl Diaries (2012) Fat Man and Little Boy (1989) The China Syndrome (1979) Biological disaster: 28 Days Later (2002) 28 Weeks Later (2007) Contagion (2011) I Am Legend (2007) World War Z (2013) Zombieland (2009) Other

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 25/08/2019 On a radmon.org forum thread we sort of got to discussing the thickness of Aluminium for shielding beta but I didn't want to divert that thread too much so started a new thread on this subject here. I had quoted, roughly in all honesty, that 5mm aluminium would do well for beta shielding and was met with this reply by user FSM19: For a beta shield you need 3mm of aluminium, foil isn't thick enough, UK Civil Defence geiger counters and ionisation instruments, such as the Meter Doserate Portable No 1 Trainer, Meter Doserate Portable No 1

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 20/08/2019 I have found a relatively inexpensive source for a Cs137 check source. It is in the form of a 'new old stock' Raytheon CK1097-15 spark gap from ebay.co.uk. (No longer listed - You may find one by searching.) It isn't very active though. I bought it to use as a calibration source for my gamma spectrometer project I'm on with. I tested using a LND712 tube and got about 55 CPM tops (background was ~17 CPM) and had to place the spark gap right up to the end window of the LND712. Whilst not very active it should work well for calibration